Powerhouse brings fuel-saving technology online

VICTORIA BARBER

April 25, 2008 at 10:54AM AKST

Unalaskans may not see it, but there is a quiet revolution taking place in the Unalaska City powerhouse, the result of the new piece of equipment called the Etorus FE.

It’s a small, fuel-saving device that city officials initially greeted with caution and doubt. They now say they expect it to save Unalaska millions of dollars and thousands of pounds of emissions.

"We’re really skeptical about stuff that sounds like hocus-pocus snake oil," said Jim Fitch, Unalaska powerhouse supervisor. Fitch said that the powerhouse tried a similar device 10 years ago but "it was just a big thing sitting in the back room and it didn’t work at all."

Then one day last November, Fitch was on the Internet and came across a company called Etorus, which claimed to have developed fuel catalyst technology that was environment friendly and cost effective. After doing some research, Fitch decided to give the fuel catalyst another shot.

Fitch brokered a deal with Etorus for the city to rent two Etorus FE units for a test drive. He said that the proof was immediate.

"We saw the changes in the first day, we started off with over 6 percent savings in fuel," Fitch said. "We were so excited when we first saw the results that we kept checking every hour to see how much more fuel we had saved."

Six percent may not sound like much, but in a city that uses two million gallons of diesel a year, it adds up fast. Fitch said that, at today’s fuel prices, a 5 percent saving translates to 20 cents per gallon less that the city pays for fuel – that amounts to about $2 million over five years.

That’s big results from a small contraption. The Etorus FE is a copper-colored cylinder a foot long that hooks into the fuel line of a diesel engine.

Prior to combustion, diesel flows through the Etorus FE and reacts to different minerals and elements in the cylinder. These reactions separate the clustered fuel molecules so that a greater surface area is exposed to oxygen, making the diesel burn more efficiently.

The Etorus FE Website compares this process to the way that charcoal burns when left on a furnace for 30 seconds. When charcoal burns in a lump, oxygen surrounds the outside of it but cannot penetrate to the center, allowing only the outer part to burn. 'a0

However, if the same piece of charcoal were crushed into a powder and spread out into the furnace for 30 seconds, more of the surface of the charcoal would be exposed to oxygen and a larger percentage of the charcoal would be burned.

Etorus says that the Etorus FE makes molecules of diesel burn in a similar way to the crushed charcoal. Since the fuel burns more efficiently, it doesn’t take as much to produce the same amount of energy. Since more of the diesel is used, there is less unburned fuel to be blown out of the exhaust as emissions.

Dan Winters, director of public utilities, said that after trying the Etorus FE for a couple months, the city was impressed enough with the results to purchase 14 of the units for seven of the powerhouse’s nine engines.

At $4,000 a pop, the Etorus FE does not come cheap. However, Winters said he expects to recover the $56,000 expense within six months.

So when can Unalaskans expect to see a drop in their energy bills? Not so fast, Winters > said . While the Etorus and other fuel-efficiency products can help save costs and the environment, it won’t be enough to counteract the rising price of diesel.

"Because the cost of fuel keeps rising, the consumer wouldn’t see it ... unless they do some fancy math," Winters said. "Also, the consumer wouldn’t see the savings of 100,000 pounds of emissions in the air per year."

Winters said that while the Etorus FE will relieve some of the pressure of rising diesel costs and higher emissions standards, the long-term solution would need to be more radical.

"It’s time to move on geothermal," Winters said. "Geothermal will happen. It’s just a matter of finding geothermal liquids in the valley."

Victoria Barber can be reached at (907) 348-2424 or toll free at (800) 770-9830, ext. 424.